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Should Next-Gen Game Consoles Be Upgradeable?
MojoKid writes "Historically, console add-ons that boosted the performance of the primary unit haven't done well. Any attempt to upgrade a system's core performance risks bifurcating the user base and increases work developers must do to ensure that a game runs smoothly on both original and upgraded systems. The other reason is that a number of games rely on very specific hardware characteristics to ensure proper operation. In a PC, swapping a CPU with 256K of L2 for a chip with 512K of L2 is a non-issue assuming proper platform support. Existing software will automatically take advantage of the additional cache. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, allows programmers to lock specific cache blocks and use them for storing data from particular threads. In that case, expanding the amount of L2 cache risks breaking previous games because it changes the range of available cache addresses. The other side of the upgrade argument is that the Xbox 360 has been upgraded more effectively than any previous console; current high-end versions ship with more than 10x the storage of the original, as well as support for HDMI and integrated WiFi. It would also forestall the decline in comparative image quality between console and PC platforms."
No
Bifurcation means the splitting of a main body into two parts.
The Next Gen console is an inexpensive PC capable of playing the newest games with reasonable quality.
The whole console paradigm is based on two qualities.
1. Price. Consoles cut corners and lack certain qualities that PCs have and as a result have great game performance at a reduced price. This is entirely possible with PC hardware today. If MS builds their own PC from the ground up to be a gaming machine then there's no reason why it can't support windows and have superior game performance.
2. Ease of use. PCs have been hobbled for years by being too complicated for their own good when it comes to games. More sophisticated gamers have no problem with this but it can be an issue with many. Take a cue from Apple and lock down these console replacement PCs by default so the casual users doesn't mess them up. For one thing, restrict multitasking by default as that harms game performance. If people want to have lots of background processes running while they play their game then give them a setting that lets them disable the feature. But by default, just as with typical consoles, have them devote all their attention to the game when it's running. Everything else is suppressed. Also as MS would be releasing these machines there would be no driver confusion since all the systems would come with the exact same hardware installed in them.
This would also break down the barrier between Xbox users and PC users. This barrier is not in MS's interests. If the Xbox and the PC play the exact same games then no other console is going to be able to compete with them. Exclusive titles just for the xbox that don't get released on the PC don't help the xbox... they hurt the PC.
As an additional aside, the consoles and MS especially need to get serious about producing a REAL media center. Something like XMBC only better. XMBC is pretty impressive for an open source community built project but MS, Sony, Nintendo, or Apple can do better. Stop dicking around. Stop trying to restrict what people can and cannot play on the machine. This only hobbles the utility of the system and ensures it won't catch on. Who gives a damn about windows media center edition? Who ever cared? It was a flop right out the door because it was half baked. Produce a complete product and release it. We want it.
Oh, and MS... consider dropping a version of windows on a phone that can run desktop applications. These smart phones are vastly more powerful then the machines that ran windows 3.1 . I think some have to be faster then those that initially ran windows XP. If you can't squeeze a version of windows 8 on one of those phones with a custom touch UI... then you're fools. A system that had that sort of capability would be vastly more useful then any other device on the market.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
citation please?
Can't find exact install base, but The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask required the Expansion Pak and it alone sold 3million copies. So 3 million at an absolute minimum to get a ballpark figure going. Plenty of other games highly encouraged people to get it too.
It's not even true anymore anyhow. There are so many different classes of Apple hardware that a developer has to target that it's not a homogenous platform anymore. You've got three different resolutions ranging from 480x320 to 1024x768 (not even the same aspect ratio), two incompatible instruction sets (ARMv6 and ARMv7), two incompatible and fundamentally opposite graphics APIs (OpenGL ES 1.x and 2.x, which is kind of like DX7 fixed function versus DX9 programmable), varying amounts of CPU cores, clockspeeds, amounts of RAM, screen sizes... Third-party iOS apps are running on three different device families, and that's only going to broaden when Apple's iTV product comes out.
All told, there are currently twelve different product lines running iOS (with further variations within a product line, such as amount of flash), all with different capabilities, all with different OS version support. For each of those twelve devices, you have to support at least two major OS versions, and potentially a few sub-versions. The feature grid on the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices) should underscore how non-homogeneous the platform is.
Even more than 4 years... XBox 360 is almost 7 years old, as it was unveiled in may 2005